Quinta Gameros

The Quinta Gameros is one of the most unexpected buildings in northern Mexico: a full-blown French Art Nouveau mansion rising improbably from the Chihuahuan desert. Completed around 1910 for a wealthy mine owner, it features stained glass, sinuous ironwork, intricately carved woodwork, and a roofline that would be perfectly at home in Brussels or Nancy. How it ended up in Chihuahua is part of the story of the Porfiriato, the long period of stability and Europeanising ambition that preceded the Revolution.

The building now houses the Regional Museum of Chihuahua, with collections on the archaeology, history, and natural history of the state. But the building itself is the real attraction — walk through the rooms slowly and let the sheer improbability of its existence sink in.

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A story
The mansion was commissioned around 1907 by Manuel Gameros, a silver mine owner, as a wedding gift for his fiancée — who broke off the engagement before it was finished. Gameros lived there briefly before the Revolution swept away the old elite, and Pancho Villa himself used it as a headquarters in 1913–14. Today the building houses the Regional Museum of Chihuahua.